Recent Events
Bakkt has completed its first round seed funding, raised $182 million. Investors include Eagle Seven, Alan Howard, Goldfinch Partners, Protocol Ventures, M12 (the venture capital arm of Microsoft), Horizons Ventures, Galaxy Digital, the Boston Consulting Group, PayU, CMT Digital, Intercontinental Exchange and Pantera Capital.
What is it?
Bakkt is a cryptocurrency trading and liquidity platform owned by the New York Stock Exchange’s parent company Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).
Bakkt is currently seeking regulatory approval to launch a one-day physically delivered Bitcoin futures contract along with physical warehousing. It is awaiting permission from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Bakkt’s ambition is not just to be a trading platform, they want to bring cryptocurrency to consumer-grade payment field. And they cooperate with Starbucks to implement the first scenario.
How bitcoin payment works: take Bitpay for example
What is different?
Backed by ICE, and attracted many big-name partners like Microsoft, Starbucks and BCG.
ICE is already a CFTC-registered “designated contract market”, it has ability to “self-certify” a futures product for listing without prior CFTC approval. It just has to file its paper first.
Bakkt bitcoin futures contact is physically-settled.
Cater to regulators. All bitcoin trades on Bakkt will be fully prefunded, and no leveraged trading and margin trading.
What is the meaning?
Backed by ICE, attracted enormous funding from traditional financial industry. That's positive for the market.
First institutional grade regulated exchange, clearing and warehousing services for physical delivery and storage. Cryptocurrency market will be formalized gradually.
Bakkt’s infrastrucure will acclerate the application implementation of cryptocurrency.
Physically-settled means reducing supply of bitcoin, maybe increase price.
Conclusion
Bakkt will be the go-to platform for various financial institutions to trade cryptocurrency securely, and it certainly could be the catalyst for the next large cryptocurrency bull run.